Two parliamentary parties present presidential candidates

Chair of the far-right People’s Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) and MP Marian Kotleba will run for president in the 2019 spring elections. He announced his intention to run as a civic candidate on May 31 in Banská Bystrica.

This means that to qualify for candidacy he will have to collect at least 15,000 signatures, the SITA newswire reported.

Earlier that day, MP for Sme Rodina, Milan Krajniak, announced his candidacy. According to him, a president needs to be an island of peace.

“I am running to fulfil what people have been expecting from politics for years, but haven’t lived to see yet,” Krajniak told the press, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

Milan Krajniak (Source: SITA)

Who else is running?

Several other candidates have already announced their intention to run in next year’s presidential election. This includes scientist Robert Mistrík, supported by Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), lawyer and member of Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia) Zuzana Čaputová, political analyst Eduard Chmelár and even the former Supreme Court President Štefan Harabin.

Meanwhile, the key witness in the abduction of ex-president Michal Kováč’s son to Austria, Oskar Fegyveres, confirmed his candidacy to the private broadcaster TV JOJ, as the Denník N daily reported.

Observers expect that in the absence of the current President Andrej Kiska, opposition parties are unlikely to come up with a joint candidate and will instead opt for someone from their own ranks. Having their people in the presidential race is also a way for the parties to measure the temperature of society before the 2020 parliamentary elections.